Think back to when you were house shopping for your current dwelling place. When you chose the home, I guarantee you took into consideration the town in which it is located. I am sure you looked at the shopping, grocery stores, gyms, schools, and recreational opportunities available to you and your household. You wanted to make sure the community was a community that would benefit you, and help you obtain the quality of life you were looking for.
But now that you have committed to the home you live in now. You are no longer an outsider looking in. You have become apart of the community. What do I mean by becoming apart? Well I am so glad you asked! Becoming apart means to transition from not only consuming the benefits the community has to offer, but YOU become a benefit to the community. You are now one of its amenities. What type will you be?
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A town isn't great because of all of its stuff, what makes a town truly great is its people. I have an exceptionally great town.
Now before you get too anxious and start thinking to yourself “I already have too many things on my plate as it is.” I am not asking you to volunteer more, be on more committees, or go to more meetings.
Reflect on last week's blog. I wrote about practicing the Art Of Hospitality, and today we are talking about taking the show on the road. This is a great way to start becoming apart of your community.
I always tell my kids they are not limited to giving hospitality inside of our home. We can take hospitality outside of our front door and into our community. It is a philosophy I believe in so much I even included it in our family devotional Foundation Of Character. You can do this too by simply smiling at someone, holding the door open, greeting them with a good morning, afternoon, or evening. This is one way of becoming apart, but you don't have to stop there.
I wonder what would happen if, Instead of complaining and saying, “I wish someone would do something about it.” We took the initiative to be than somebody and do that something?
Oh to travel back to a time when people would take pride in their hometown, a generation who took ownership of it, cared for it with pride, each person doing their part. This is how you make a community better, this is how you add value to a community. This is how you become apart.
When you become apart of something you stop only consuming it. Rather a motivation rises up in you for that something to succeed. Think about your marriage. When you matured in your love for your spouse you no longer looked at them to satisfy your desires and needs, you switched to having the perspective,how I can do my part to make this marriage the best it can be. Or when you had children. Before they came into the world the reason you wanted to have them was simply because you desired them, but as they grew older a responsibility rose up in you that wasn’t there before. Provoking you to invest in them so they could become, at the minimum, a decent human being.
The same goes for your town. Are you merely passing through until you find the community you desire to be apart of some day? Or are you committed to taking up the responsibility to transform, in your small way, your community into the community you always dreamt of being apart of?
What if we all lived this way wherever we are planted?
Just think of the possibilities!
What would happen world wide?
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